The Weekend Australian Magazine April 21-22, 2007, The Style issue
Drama Queen
She may be the world's top model, but here's Gemma Ward as you've never seen her before. Fashion editor Edwina McCann and photographer Andy Baker get an exclusive look at her new career.
It's hard to believe the girl with the stringy, wet hair sitting on the muddy riverbank intently reading Donna Tartt's
The Secret History is the world's most sought-after model. It gets even more difficult as I watch her lower herself into the murky, freezing water, dressed only in underwear and swimming without complaint in a grimy river deep in the heart of the Royal National Park, an hour south of Sydney. Obviously Gemma Ward doesn't mind getting her hands - and everything else - dirty. It's all a part of a new career direction for the 19-year-old with the ethereal face who launched a whole new look in fashion. Ward is starring alongside Toni Collette and names such as Luke Ford and Rhys Wakefield, in the low budget film
The Black Balloon. Her river plunge is so far from her life of gloss and glamour that she must be either a tenacious talent or mad.
Filming was completed around Sydney last month and post-production is due to finish in September, with a release date yet to be set. At the very least, Ward's participation will attract the curious from the fashion industry.
Although Director Elissa Down cast Ward in the role, you'd be wrong to assume she is cashing in on the fame factor. The two Perth natives ave worked together before, with Down having cast a 13-year-old Ward in her first feature film,
Pink Pyjamas, six years ago. Ward hadn't then been "discovered" and auditioned because she had a burning ambition to be an actor. She still does.
That ambition saw Ward skip Milan's fashion week last October to work alongside Liv Tyler in the horror movie
The Strangers. Interestingly for a woman who has found fame and fortune through her face, she wears a mask and plays a home invader. Aside from
The Strangers, which is due for release later this year, and Down's short film, Ward's acting experience has been limited to a music clip for John Mayer, Tv advertisements as a 10-year-old, and drama classes.
"I only did modelling because they told me it would help me get into acting," she says casually, while heading back to her modest trailer after lunch. (For the record, she piled her plate high and ate the lot.)
In this age of celebrity it would be almost impossible not to have heard of Ward. She was labelled the "new Twiggy" by the editor of Italian
Vogue in 2004, and has fronted campaigns for high-end designers such as Prada, Calvin Klein and Yves Saint Laurent. Her push into mainstream recognition was sealed last year when she was featured on the cover of
Vanity Fair with George Clooney, for no obvious reason.
Discovered when a Ford model agency talent search visited her home town in 2002, Ward's first real modelling job was a shoot for Australian
Harper's Bazaar style director Mark Vassallo and photographer Justin Smith. Vassallo was also working on an independent magazine project,
Mark, and put the unknown Ward on the inaugural cover, following it up by giving her the cover of the second issue and asking her to write an introduction for herself. A copy found its way to IMG modelling agency in New York and a career was launched.
Says Vassallo: "Even early on she always talked about acting." In
Mark, Ward writes: "I don't know how I will go with this career [modelling] ... but if I continue to fall over in heels as much as I do, then I probably won't go that far at all! I've actually always had a bit of a passion for acting, and if I can see a pathway in modelling to get me there, then that would be fantastic."
The story of
The Black Balloon is a personal one. Written by the director, produced by
Strictly Ballroom's Tristram Miall and co financed by Mel Gibson's company, Icon, the script draws on Down's experience of having two brothers with autism. In the film Thomas (Wakefield) plays a young man struggling to come to terms with the autism his brother Charlie (Ford). Ward plays Thomas's girlfriend, JAckie, while Collette is the boys' mother.
Down is at pains to point out that her family's experience with autism, while difficult, is not negative: "We want the film to be heart-warming and uplifting but also show the trails and tribulations of the siblings." Ward says she was touched by the person outlook of the story and this was on of the factors that attracted her to the project.
The million dollar question, of course, is: can Ward act? According to Down, Ward threw herself into the part, and there is no doubt she threw herself semi-naked into a cold river while her stand-in required a full wetsuit.
"She has such a beautiful, engaging quality and she is so hard-working," says Down. "She is definitely someone to watch." But as a
Vanity Fair cover with George Clooney shows, the world is already watching.
OOOOO I LOVE GEMMA ARTICLES


but why did they say the shows in October?!